Warwickshire CC chairman Norman Gascoigne looks ahead to the new season

WARWICKSHIRE chairman Norman Gascoigne has outlined his full confidence that the club’s finances – and financial prospects – are sound despite the £20 million debt incurred to build the new Pavilion End at Edgbaston.

WARWICKSHIRE chairman Norman Gascoigne has outlined his full confidence that the club’s finances – and financial prospects – are sound despite the £20 million debt incurred to build the new Pavilion End at Edgbaston.

The Bears will open their season at home to Somerset today in the shadow of the £32 million structure which, after years as a ‘Master Plan’, finally came to fruition and opened in 2011.

The building is impressive. Opinions vary as to whether the redevelopment needed to be on quite such a grand (and expensive) scale but Birmingham City Council, whose £20 million loan was essential to the project, would only get involved if the end-product was, as they put it, “iconic.”

Is it iconic? Not really. But impressive, yes, and, most importantly, full of function rooms and swanky facilities for players, officials and media which will, without question, help to ensure that Edgbaston retains its status as an international venue.

Never mind the double kick-in-the-teeth the ECB dished out to Warwickshire by not awarding them Test matches in 2013 and 2014; for the Bears’ security in medium and long terms, the crumbling old wreck of a pavilion, parts of which stretched back to Victorian times, had to go.

Finding repayments of £1m per year to the council for the foreseeable future in a recession will be a big ask, however.

Such a level of debt has destabilised many large sports clubs and toppled a few.

But Gascoigne, a former banker, while fully cognisant of the demands facing the Bears, is comfortable with their ability to meet them.

“We went into this plan knowing we would have the debt and nothing has changed,” he said.

“Nothing has happened over the last two or three years that makes us question the business plan that we had in the first place and which a number of organisations, including the city council, said was fine.

“And nothing has happened to make me waver in my confidence that we can handle it.

“We know we have to service the debt and we have parts of the business – conference and banqueting particularly – which are helping drive a business plan which was put together with the financial climate in mind.

“The conference and banqueting side is already exceeding our plans. This year will see 60 per cent growth over last year. In the last six months we have done what we did in the previous 12 – and that despite the state of the economy.

“In the city council we have an excellent partner. We have a fixed interest rate so, if interest rates start to shoot up, that’s not going to bother us.

“I think we will be able to manage the debt comfortably and won’t ever need a terribly sympathetic ear but if the need did arise I would hope that ear would be sympathetic.

“But I must stress I am confident we won’t need it.

“There is synergy between us and the council in terms of us both portraying Birmingham and the West Midlands in the strongest light possible.

“We are benefiting from dragging people from London and the other bigger cities into Birmingham and that is what we have got to capture not just this year but in future years.

“It would be daft to say we were not disappointed that we did not get the Ashes and India Tests in 2013 and 2014 but we have plenty of liquid finds and not getting those two Tests has not disrupted that greatly. It just turns the screw a little bit.

“We need to keep the pressure on to drive the overall profitability of the business plan but we will see what we finally get from the Champions Trophy in 2013 – and that is looking very optimistic.”

As a man whose working life was spent in finance, as a banker before retiring in 2001 and then a consultant, Gascoigne is well-qualified to evaluate Warwickshire’s fiscal health.

But, a Bears committee member since 2004 and chairman since 2010, he is at pains to stress that, for all the talk of business plans and revenue-raising and maximising non-match day income, the club remains passionately a cricket-driven institution.

“Of course the debt has to be dealt with but all the talk of it should not take away from the fact that this club is about cricket,” he said. “And money has to be reinvested back into the cricket to make sure we are competing a the top of the county game. Warwickshire County Cricket Club is about playing cricket and, first and foremost, the county championship.

“We have to do other things as part of our business model but it all comes down to what the cricket achieves. And, from my perspective, getting that prestige and reputation is about winning the championship.

“That’s why I, as a county chairman, have been very anxious to preserve the structure of the championship as the Morgan Report has been discussed.

“We have just had two excellent years of competition in the championship. It is a little bit vulnerable to the weather but that’s always going to be the case and in the last two years the title equation has gone to the final day and it’s been absolutely enthralling.

“It was a great effort from the Bears to finish second last season. It was frustrating to be pipped on the last day but a bloody good job all round and hopefully we can go one better this time.”

While Jim Troughton’s team aims to go one better in the championship in the months ahead, they will be looking to be a great deal better than last season in the shorter-formats, not least the T20 in which their form tailed right off in 2011.

This year, happily, they have a smaller and much more sensible T20 group programme to deal with as the counties continue to search for the best format for the competition, which remains a useful coffer-filler despite having unquestionable peaked in popularity.

“There are two arguments about T20,” Gascoigne said.

“One is to play it throughout the season which means players have to adapt from one format to another very quickly and they tell me they are not keen on that.

“Also, and this doesn’t affect Warwickshire, but counties who have overseas players coming and going for the T20 would find that very difficult to slot them in.

“I think the majority favour having T20 in a block and I favour the more limited number of matches, like five home and five away, so you can try to contain that block with as little disruption as possible to the rest of the season.

“We have taken some pressure off the fixture-list this season by reducing the T20 which everybody felt that, at 16 matches, was pushing it.

“My view is let’s give the revised structure that was agreed late in 2010 a chance to operate.”